| Description | Material relating to Kubrick's unfinished historical epic, 'Napoleon', about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). The film was intended to be large-scale biopic, with accurate recreations of real battles using cheap labour armies from Romania or Yugoslavia. The title role of Bonaparte was considered for a number of actors, including Oskar Werner and David Hemming, but it was eventually given to Jack Nicholson who would later go on to star in 'The Shining (1980). As was characteristic of Kubrick, he carried out a huge amount of research in preparation for the development of his film, to the point where it was said that he became obsessed by Napoleon and his life. The project was eventually abandoned due to the high costs of location filming and the release of several films about the Napoleonic era, such as the commercial failure, 'Waterloo' (1970, Bondarchuk). Nonetheless, this collection contains a wide variety of the research and development carried out by Kubrick, particularly in 1968 and 1969 when he first began the project. Items include an original screenplay, the dialogues with Felix Markham, and location research. |